The present invention generally relates to a method of packing, an article or a group of articles pre-arranged to be packed, with a flexible packaging material.
Typically, the flexible packaging material may be a single film or a laminate of one or more materials and having cold or hot sealing properties.
This invention also relates to package for wrapping a article or a group of pre-arranged articles.
Particularly this invention relates to packages of flexible sheet element which are formed in automatic packaging machines with the help of article wrapping devices/apparatus.
The packages in accordance with the prior art are formed in the forming section of horizontal or vertical wrapping machines which are well known in the packaging/material handling art and typically comprise a forming section structure through which an elongated sheet of flexible wrapping material is drawn from a roll. The forming section is operative to continuously form from the sheet a forwardly moving tube having a rearwardly disposed open inlet end, and a laterally projecting “fin” defined by drawn-together side edge portions of the sheet. An article in-feed system is used to insert articles or groups of pre arranged articles to be wrapped into the open tube inlet end. The inserted articles, in a longitudinally spaced group, are then carried within the wrapping material linearly to as it forwardly exits the forming section. The individual articles, or associated groups of articles, as may be the case, forwardly transported within the tube are spaced apart by spaced longitudinal sections of the tube.
As the article-containing tube exits the forming section, the fin portion of the tube is drawn between, and sealed by, an opposed pair of counter rotating sealing elements. The sealed fin is then passed through a foldover station, which operates to fold the sealed fin over onto an adjacent portion of the tube. The tube, with its sealed and folded over fin, is then passed through a cutting and sealing station having cross seal jaws which operates to compress, heat seal, and transversely cut the longitudinal tube sections between longitudinally adjacent articles or groups of pre arranged article pairs, to form individual, article-containing packages with sealed opposite ends.
The speed of the tube section, and subsequent rate of end sealed individual packages produced by the horizontal wrapping machine is dependent upon the rate at which the tube moves linearly through the forming section. Therefore the length of the fin seal is critical to the speed at which the packages are formed end to end.
Further as occasionally happens, particularly when groups of pre arranged articles such as biscuits or cookies arranged as in FIGS. 4B and 4F are packed, displacement of the articles may cause leading or the first article to fall from its vertical position and therefore be trapped between the end seals of two packages, i.e. between the front end seal of one pack and the rear seal of the adjacent pack. This causes wastage of two packs as the trapped article leaves both packs unsealed.
Typical packages produced in accordance with the prior art process have end/cross seals formed on the ends of the packs and are perpendicular to the longer side of the packs and longitudinal fin seal parallel to the longer side of the pack.
One drawback, of the package formed currently in the art is that the end seals distort the ends of the formed package.
Because of the projecting flaps of the end seals these surfaces are not available as display media for the product. In space restricted retail counters often such longitudinal packs are conveniently placed with their ends facing the customer in a stack of competing products. The flaps of the end seals distort the brands or logos provided on the ends of the pack and often the customer has to draw out the pack from the stack to scrutinize the pack.